sewing up the broken fairytales
by chandelure
Summary: only now he realizes he never looked hard enough. —LyraSilver


sewing up the broken fairytales

**lyra/silver**

.

b e c a u s e _she's doing up_

**the patchwork **quilt 

_of _

s

o

m

e

t

h

i

n

g

**not her **_own_.**  
**

.

It's a Thursday — well, she can't really remember, because it's oh so insignificant — when she beats Red and becomes Champion of Kanto as well as Johto and all she can think when he returns his final pokemon is _what now? _Because from the start, it'd always been about the league, but now when she'd defeated them all — what's she supposed to do?

So she moves out to Blackthorn and _trainstrainstrains _until she's sweating blood and bleeding sweat and her pokemon are _sososo _powerful, but it's pointless because it's not even like she's going to _fight _anyone, when everything is said and done. Because she's the champion and no one really gets there and so she never fights _anyone_. And she's broken by the world of grownups knocking on her door with their videocameras and interviewers and she really, _really _wishes she never got to where she is. Because, oh, she liked the world of sparkling sea and golden laughter and New Bark more than the world of Dragon's Den and probing questions and medals.

Ethan comes to visit, sometimes, when he's not running around with his pokemon all over Johto and they sit down with cups of milk or hot cocoa or tea and just talk, but he's always up too soon and gone too soon and she's always even lonelier than usual after, when he's left.

And really, scarlet hair and silver eyes are the only breath of fresh air, when he comes to challenge her or she goes to challenge him, and she likes it when he comes more than when Ethan comes because it's out of the ordinary and it breaks her everyday routine and she's honestly just glad to see _him_, because she knows he's a real challenge and so — so she welcomes him with a happy smile and he always looks at her with a scowl on his face because Silver just isn't _used _to kindness, him being the son of Giovanni and a thief and — she cuts him off by calling out Typhlosion and he sends out Feraligatr and then boom! they're fightingfightingfighting with a roar of intensity that, she thinks, only occurs when she's battling Silver.

.

He's broken like she is, except that he was broken when she met him — twisted and hurt and filled with so much pain that she's always afraid he's going to just let go and break down someday, since he's overflowing with so much desperation. And she's happy that she isn't the only person the world hadn't gone and fucked up, because that would make it even worse then it already is.

So she likes to visit him sometimes, and he always opens the door for her even when he scowls in her face and sharply asks her what she wanted from him. She answers with a quick, bitter smile and tell him it sounded too quiet when she passed the door. He doesn't buy it, because he _sees _her lingering outside until she finally taps on the door in a flighty, erratic way. Just like her, he says to her, and she berates him for insulting the champion and teases him, because he never even beat her in the first time — she was always the winner. He bites back, sour at her poking fun, and she reminds him gently that she was kidding — she was always just lucky.

And he'll smile his twisted smile and mutter, "Oh, with my luck, I'll never win," and she laughs and says,

"Things change."

He smiles again, a little less in pieces, and she thinks she hears him say, "Things do."

.

The first time he stops by her apartment, he stands awkwardly in the door frame, seeming too big for the cramped apartment, and mutters that he'd thought that maybe he would stop by.

She gets over her surprise to hide her laugh behind her hand, and she says, happier to see him then Ethan or the cameras again, "That's sweet."

He blinks at her, wondering what he did to deserve so much kindness, and blushes, (she later says that his face was a very becoming color of pink) flustered, and so very unlike the Silver she knows that she wonders what had happened to the real one.

It feels out of place when he looks around at all the empty spaces on the wall, where she had taken down pictures of New Bark and her Mother, and he asks her why the walls seem so bare. She answers shyly, scared that he'll see through her nice little facade she has so nicely set up, with some choice words stitched together to make sense of the overwhelming white.

She considers asking why _his _place is so cluttered, when she always pictured him as the neat sort of person, but she thinks it's a silly question and settles for just sitting down next to him and listening to him talk.

He runs out of things to say soon — Silver isn't a word sort of person, she knows — and looks at her trying to find out where the Lyra he knows is, but he finds someone different where he thought he had seen a second ago, and he wonders when he missed the fact that she was horribly too adult for a fourteen (fifteen? He doesn't know — no one really knows her birthday anyway, even the nosy press — because he never really cared to ask. Just like everyone else, he presumes) year old to be, with her molten chocolate eyes deep as the ocean and bitter, and her mouth curved in such a way that made you see how many questions she had answered, in such a way that the new Silver — the other one had given way a long time ago with her happiness — wanted to kiss her.

He doesn't, opting to say goodbye and leave the suffocating mess of their lives behind.

He feels guilty, though, for putting another set of troubles on her shoulders.

.

At some point, she goes somewhere else, Hoenn or Sinnoh (maybe both, even) to become another champion, and he sees her in the paper from time to time, with headlines that he got used to a long time ago.

When she gets back, she's even older, and so is he, in a way, but not the same way she is.

She confesses to him she was running away all over again, and he doesn't know what to say — I love you? I'm sorry? I don't deserve you? You don't deserve all this? I'm afraid? — so he settles for the next best thing, and kisses her.

He likes to pretend that that one kiss healed her, stitched her all back up. But he knows that you can't always make miracles.

Except, he decides, when you're Lyra.

.

**and she **_hates_

_with _an 

un e q u a l e d

**hate**,

_loves with _an 

**unequaled **

love,

_and _

_lives _**like no one **

else could.**  
**


End file.
